India 'cockroach' leaders who called on election chief to quit are freed from jail

Key points

• Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka of the Cockroach Janta Party were freed from Tihar jail after a magistrate ordered their release.
• They were jailed for trespassing at Delhi's Jantar Mantar, which was removed from the list of designated protest sites.
• The group wants Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar to resign over alleged manipulation of voter rolls, which the commission denies.

Two leaders of the Gen Z-led Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) have been released from Tihar jail in Delhi, a week after they were arrested for trespassing at a banned protest site. Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka walked out hours after a magistrate ordered their release, the BBC reported.

The two men had been detained after crossing barricades and climbing over the locked gate at Jantar Mantar, a historic venue recently removed from the list of designated protest sites. They denied wrongdoing.

Calls for election chief to resign

Das and Ranka have been calling on India's chief election commissioner to resign. Critics accuse the commission of manipulating voter rolls to benefit the governing party, charges the commission rejects.

The CJP began as an internet joke in May after India's top judge compared unemployed young people to "cockroaches". It is not a registered political party but a collective that mobilised young people over leaked exam papers, and it has since shifted focus to India's electoral system.

The group accuses Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of revising electoral rolls through the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) to benefit Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party. Both the BJP and the Election Commission have rejected the allegation. Around 130 million names have been removed from voter lists since last year under the exercise, which the commission says is meant to remove ineligible, dead and duplicate entries.

Truth alone triumphs. Long live the revolution.

— Saurav Das